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17. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS,

1824-1892.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, an American journalist, was porn at Providence, Rhode Island, February 24, 1824. His early education was received in a private school at Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. At the age of fifteen he became clerk in a mercantile house in New York, and in 1842 he and his brother became members of the Brook Farm Community, where he remained a year and a half, dividing his time between study and agricultural labor. The following year and a half were spent by the two brothers in the employ of a farmer at Concord, Massachusetts, after which they spent six months in tilling a piece of ground on their own account. The next four years (from 1846 to 1850) Mr. Curtis spent in Italy, Berlin, Egypt, and Syria, and on his return to America he published his first book, Nile-Notes of a Howadji, and soon thereafter joined the editorial staff of the New York Tribune. Since that time he has been a journalist continuously. He was one of the original editors of Putnam's Monthly, which was commenced in 1852. Curtis has been a constant contributor to Harper's Monthly Magazine since 1853, and to Harper's Weekly, of which he has been editor-in-chief since 1857. He has written also a number of articles for Harper's Bazar, a series of which, entitled Manners upon the Road, appeared in weekly installments from 1867 to 1873.

Mr. Curtis's second book, The Howadji in Syria, was published in 1852. In 1851 he wrote a series of letters

from the various watering-places to the Tribune. These were afterward published in a volume entitled LotusEating. Some of his magazine articles also were collected and published in book-form under the titles The Potiphar Papers and Prue and I. He wrote also a novel for Harper's Weekly entitled Trumps, which afterward appeared in book-forin.

CRITICISM.

MR. CURTIS has won an enviable reputation, not only as a journalist, but also as a lecturer and public speaker, and he has been a constant contributor to the literature of the day ever since he chose writing as his profession. His eloquence as an orator has made him a favorite before the societies in colleges and universities. He is master of an elegant style, characterized by clear and forcible thought, which in his lectures is strengthened by an attractive presence and a finely-modulated voice that never fail to please a cultured audience and make him one of the most polished and popular of platformorators.

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTHI.

DAY by day, wherever our homes may be in this great land, we have watched the passing pageant of the year. Day by day, from the first quick flush of April through the deeper green and richer bloom of May, and June, we have seen the advancing season develop and in-5 crease, until, at last, among roses and golden grain, the year stood perfect in midsummer splendor. As you have contemplated the brief glory of our sunmer,

ANALYSIS.-1. Day by day. Parse.

1, 2. Is the sentence periodic or loose?
3, 7. Make this a loose sentence.
8. Point out the figure.

where the clover almost blooms out of snow-drifts, and the red apples drop almost with the white blossoms, 10 you have perhaps remembered that the flower upon the tree was only the ornament of a moment-a brilliant part of the process by which the fruit was formed-and that the perfect fruit itself was but the seed-vessel by which the race of the tree is continued from year to 15 year.

Then have you followed the exquisite analogy that youth is the aromatic flower upon the tree; the grave life of maturer years, its sober, solid fruit; and the principles and character deposited by that life, the seeds by 20 which the glory of this race also is perpetuated?

I know the flower in your hand fades while you look at it. The dream that allures you glimmers and is gone. But flower and dream, like youth itself, are buds and prophecies. For where, without the perfumed blossom- 25 ing of the spring orchards all over the hills and among all the valleys of New England and New York, would the happy harvests of New York and New England be? And where, without the dreams of the young men lighting the future with human possibility, would be the 30 deeds of the old men, dignifying the past with human achievement? How deeply does it become us to believe this, who are not only young ourselves, but living with the youth of the youngest nation in history!

ANALYSIS.-9. Criticise the position of almost.

12. What figure in the line?

13. With what is part in apposition?

18, 19. What figures?

20. In what case is seeds?

23-25. What figures?

31. Name the modifiers of deeds.

32. Name the modifiers of it and us.

34. Point out the figure.

I congratulate you that you are young; I congratulate 35 you that you are Americans. Like you, that country is in its flower, not yet in its fruit; and that flower is subject to a thousand chances before the fruit is set. Worms may destroy it; frosts may wither it; fires may blight it; gusts may whirl it away. But how gorgeously it still 40 hangs blossoming in the garden of time, while its penetrating perfume floats all round the world and intoxicates all other nations with the hope of liberty!

Knowing that the life of every nation, as of each individual, is a battle, let us remember, also, that the 45 battle is to those who fight with faith and undespairing devotion. Knowing that nothing is worth fighting for at all unless God reigns, let us at least believe as much in the goodness of God as we do in the dexterity of the devil. And, viewing this prodigious spectacle of our 50 country—this hope of humanity, this Young America, our America-taking the sun full in its front, and making for the future as boldly and blithely as the young David for Goliath, let us believe with all our hearts; and from that faith shall spring the fact that David, 55 and not Goliath, is to win the day, and that out of the high-hearted dreams of wise and good men about our country, Time, however invisibly and inscrutably, is, at this moment, slowly hewing the most colossal and resplendent result in history.

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18. N. P. WILLIS,

1806-1867.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, an American journalist and poet, born in Portland, Maine, January 20, 1806, died at Idlewild, his residence, near Newburg, New York, on the 21st of January, 1867.

He was educated at Yale, and while still in college published, over the signature of "Roy," a number of scriptural and other poems. He graduated in 1827, and was immediately employed by Samuel G. Goodrich ("Peter Parley") to edit the Legendary and the Token. A year later he established the American Monthly Magazine, which at the end of two years was merged in the New York Mirror, a journal previously established by George P. Morris, of which Willis then became associate editor..

Soon after this Willis visited Europe, and while there wrote a series of sketches for the Mirror entitled Pencilings by the Way, which were afterward published in three volumes. He then became an attaché of the American ininister at Paris, Mr. Rives, and having traveled through Europe and through Turkey and some other parts of Asia, he returned to England, where he married the daughter of General Stace, the commandant at the Woolwich Arsenal.

In 1837 he returned to the United States, and lived for two years at Glenmary, near Owego, New York. He then became editor of the Corsair, which proved to be a short-lived literary gazette. He visited England the

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